National Register #74000339
Harmony Borax Works
State Route 190 (Milepost 109.1)
Death Valley National Park

Aaron Winters was a poor homesteader living with his frail wife in a cave and one-room stone house with
a tule-reed roof in nearby Ash Meadows. They lived much like the area's Piute Indians, eating mesquite beans,
lizards, and chuckwallas when their other rations ran short.

They had a fine spring running off the rock cliff next to the house, which formed a pool for a number of
ducks, and water for a few chickens, a pig, and a large dog. They shared this water with wandering prospectors,
and in 1880 one mentioned the simple test for borax.

Winters immediately sent for some alcohol and acid, and when it arrived he and his
wife traveled to Death Valley and gathered cotton-ball and surface crusts from the Furnace Creek playa.
When they ground the samples and added acid and alcohol, all of them burned with a green flame, the sure test
for borax.